Managers appear to manipulate firm earnings through their characterizations of pension assets to capital markets and … alter investment decisions to justify, and capitalize on, these manipulations. Managers are more aggressive with assumed … thresholds and when their managers exercise stock options. Changes in assumed returns, in turn, influence pension plan asset …

managers to take actions to support the stock price …

managers with stronger equity-based incentives and less job security are significantly less likely to use performance reporting … markets view, managers act as if they believe that comprehensive income reporting location matters …

option pay increases. Higher proportions of stock options induce managers to undertake riskier projects, to change and …

that agency costs increased (Jensen, 2005a) as substantially overvalued equity caused managers to take actions to support …

declines and missed analysts' forecasts. Anecdotal evidence and surveys suggest that managers believe that missing an earnings … include only fixed-date grants. While many studies explicitly consider whether and why managers meet or beat earnings targets …, ours is the first study to find that some managers may seek to miss earnings targets (Burstahler and Dichev, 1997) …

We investigate whether corporate managers' stock repurchase decisions are affected by their incentives to manage … diluted earning-per-share (EPS). We find that managers increase the level of their firms' stock repurchases when: (1) the … required to achieve the desired rate of EPS growth. We also find that managers' repurchase decisions are not associated with …

financial reporting system reduces the discretion allowed managers, firms will put more weight on earnings in compensation …